In his youth, Schopenhauer had close friends and lovers. But in older age, he grew into a celibate recluse.

The older we become, he argued, the less we need from others.

He compared humans to hedgehogs who huddle for warmth, but in so doing prick one another with their quills.

The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer was born on February 22, 1788, at 114 Heiliggeistgasse in the free city of Danzig (present-day Gdańsk, Poland).

Arthur’s father, Heinrich Floris, was one of the city’s most prominent merchants. Heinrich Floris was determined that his only son should become a merchant, and regularly upbraided him for his poor posture and even worse handwriting.

In 1793, when Arthur was five years old, Prussia annexed Danzig. The Schopenhauer family moved to the free Hanseatic city of Hamburg, where Arthur’s sister, Adèle, was born.

Arthur’s French brother, Jean Anthime

1797, the nine-year-old Arthur was sent from Hamburg to Le Havre, in France, to live with the family of his father’s business associate, Grégoire de Blésimaire, who had a son, Jean Anthime, of Arthur’s age.

The two years that Arthur spent in Le Havre were, Schopenhauer claimed, among the........

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